As brutal and bloody as the most recent Mortal Kombat games have been, they’ve still done a decent job of preserving the series’ past goofiness. Even so, there was one big feature that was missing: Friendships. In past Mortal Kombat games, pulling these off saw the combatants put aside their differences and realize that the value of mercy and fun ( at least until the next match started). These were missing in Mortal Kombat 11 too, but that’s changing with the Aftermath expansion.

The “friendship” feature dates all the way back to Mortal Kombat 2 as a response to all the buzz surrounding the game’s violent fatalities. The “friendships” were, of course, absolutely ridiculous and worked quite well as a way to call out how silly it is to complain about violence in a game all about fighting to the death. The feature hasn’t been a mainstay in every Mortal Kombat game since then, but it showed up early enough to be considered a classic feature.

The feature has been absent ever since the release of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and any hope of seeing it again basically vanished with the soft-reboot that was Mortal Kombat IX. “Friendship” was a product of its time, and no longer had a place in the series we thought. Yet here we are all the same. Mortal Kombat 11 is getting a DLC expansion and it’s bringing “friendships” back with it. Even the Joker and Terminator are deciding to let bygones be bygones. Who would’ve ever thought they’d see the day, eh?

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Are you looking forward to seeing friendships back in Mortal Kombat? Which one do you want to see most?

Lede image from MK 11 Friendship announcement trailer